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Comment by apetresc

8 days ago

Legit curious what the use case would be, that would justify Apple adding it in. Like, when do you need to text someone who's within Bluetooth range but somehow has no WiFi or cell reception?

26 comments

apetresc

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__MatrixMan__  8 days ago

When you're at a protest and the government shuts off the internet in response to the protest. It's happening right now in Togo, has been for ten days (https://pulse.internetsociety.org/en/shutdowns/).

  • Buttons840  8 days ago

    My eyes are opened as to how much more power the people would have if cell phones were all mesh network devices, especially as we enter a world where having a working cell phone is easier than having running water or food.

    • __MatrixMan__  8 days ago

      I'm not holding my breath--it would seem that keeping the people down is more profitable.

      But if it happens we'll have to figure out how to write partition tolerant apps, which I think would be a lot of fun. It would also make "going viral" so much more apt, as you might catch the content from people you got physically close to.

  • apetresc  6 days ago

    I dunno, that still sounds like a perfect use case for a third-party app like the one this post is about. I'm not sure government crackdowns are a core enough experience that it needs a first-party app from Apple.

ileonichwiesz  8 days ago

This is admittedly a rare and minor use case, but maybe on a plane if you’re not sitting next to each other? Last time I flew I saw two teenage girls communicating by typing into the same note file and Airdropping it back and forth for hours - it struck me as very silly that there was no messaging interface that they could use instead.

reaperducer  8 days ago

when do you need to text someone who's within Bluetooth range but somehow has no WiFi or cell reception?

There's no cell service or wifi at my neighborhood movie theater. If I could send her a message when she's up, I could tell my wife to bring me back a box of Sno-caps.

c22  8 days ago

When would you want to peer over third party networks while a direct connection is possible?

vishnugupta  8 days ago

Hiking, Airplane, stadia (here in India the tower capacity get exhausted), underground metro etc

  • subscribed  8 days ago

    Hiking? Probably not very useful since you must be within Bluetooth range and you can whisper to your chat partner.

    If you're hiking in the remote area youre much better off with LoRaWAN or amateur radio transceivers anyway.

    • bee_rider  7 days ago

      I dunno, I bet if it was widespread people could come up with applications. Like, telling people doesn’t necessarily leave a record, so you could talk about tomorrow’s plans and then send a summary text so everyone has a record and all the details.

    • lxgr  7 days ago

      “Coded PHY” Bluetooth has a range of up to a kilometer! Once you add mesh forwarding, you could probably cover quite some distance on moderately busy hikes.

dewey  8 days ago

On top of that “It would be so easy” is almost never true for a billion users network with all kinds of edge cases. Seems like a very narrow use case when there’s things missing from iMessage that could be way more appealing for a bigger group of users.

  • lxgr  8 days ago

    I’d agree if Airdrop, which includes offline identification via users’ address books, didn’t already exist. That seems to be by far the hardest part.

    • dewey  8 days ago

      The technical details are often not the tricky part of new features. You have to integrate it into the existing app that people know and use, explain how it works, maintain it forever etc.

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immibis  6 days ago

This happens at festivals - despite being largely offline events, you still want to text your friends "hey I'm over at <place>", but the one rural cell that's usually empty for 362 days out of the year is getting DDoSed by 50000 people suddenly arriving one weekend.